One Last Summer
by suiei
Summary: This isn't what you're expecting. Mirai timeline, a normal girl has to survive without anyone's help. This ain't gonna be easy.
1. Chapter 1

I don't own DBZ.

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The ground overhead shook violently, knocking loose a few pieces of rubble, which showered down upon us.

I clutched the edges of my coat tightly around my shoulders and cringed. If there had been light to see by, I knew my face would have been streaked with tears, flushed bright red where it wasn't ghastly white with fear. My eyes felt swollen and dry, stinging from the dust and from crying too much.

It was made even worse, since my contacts felt like gobs of sticky, scratchy stuff all over my cornea and I couldn't blink without having what light we had swirl around as the contacts moved out of place, before eventually settling back over my iris to restart the whole cycle..

"When do you think it's going to _stop_?" one woman whispered, her voice trembling.

We sat in a group of five, huddled together in a miraculous open space beneath a collapsed building. There was no other light than the soft glow of our cell phones, which threw our harrowed faces in sharp relief. I was probably the youngest of the group, if the dark haired woman sitting to my left was the second youngest, and didn't simply look older than she actually was. The man sitting left of her was middle aged and balding, with dirty work slacks and torn shirt. The woman sitting next to him to his left had been the one to speak, and she was visibly trembling. Her eyes were wide and expressive and couldn't settle down on one thing for more than a few seconds, except for the creaking ceiling. The man next to her; the one to my right, was an old man who sat stiffly in a crisp suit, which managed to be dignified despite the heavy coating of dust and dirt that ruined it. His jaw was clenched shut, almost as if he refused to admit his own abject terror.

We were alone, except for a few still bodies lying just outside of the small circle of light.

No one answered the womans' question.

_Is it terrorists? Are we under attack?_

The woman sitting next to me flinched badly as another tremor caused the roof overhead to groan and squeal.

We all jumped as a cheerful string of beeps sliced into the thick, silent air.

Slowly, as if realizing its existence, the balding man put his cell phone to his ear.

"Hello?" he asked hoarsely. In the pale blue light, his facial expression shifted drastically from patient fear to near hysteric worry. "Ohmygod—Lenore! Yes—yes—I'm alright—don't worry! Where are the kids?"

The man went rigid and said nothing. All our hearts stood still.

I glanced up uneasily.

"...You don't _know_? The school's line is _dead_?" His voice was pale with disbelief. Pulling enough composure together to continue, he asked, "Well...are _you_ alright? Good? Well, thank God...Where are you? Main—Lenore? Lenore! _Lenore_! Answer me, goddamn it!"

The man's panicked cries echoed off the walls. A couple of us, including me, winced as some more rubble trickled down.

We all stayed silent, and eventually the man threw the phone away from him, sobbing piteously. It flew into a dark corner and for a few seconds its light glowed, and then sank into darkness as the screen went black.

When the Earth hadn't trembled in a good ten or twenty minutes, we started to hope it was over.

"We're going to have to get out of here," the old man in the suit said gravely.

"_How_?" I asked, and squinted at his face.

"We should wait until the rescue crews come!" the woman to the left of me said. She looked like she'd hopped right out of an old Pat Benatar music video.

"That might take far too long," the old man replied.

"It took a long time to fully search the Twin Towers," I said. "It could be weeks if the city up above is in too bad a shape."

"What are the Twin Towers?" the hysteric woman asked, staring at me with wide, crazy eyes.

I was stunned, and opened my mouth to reply, but the old man interrupted.

"It doesn't matter, the point is we should try to get out of here. She's right, it _could_ take them weeks to find us."

We glanced at each other.

"We might make this place cave in on us if we try and dig ourselves out," the same woman to the left of me said. "This isn't some movie! This is real life!"

"I'd rather die _trying_," the old man in the suit snapped shortly. "It would be better than starving to death!"

I stood up, and began to pick my way to the edges of the small space, stepping delicately over bodies, grateful for the near non-light. Every now and then my toes or heel nudged or stepped on something soft and pliable, and I would toe at it for a way around it, trying hard not to think about what I was poking.

"Stay here if you like, but that's your choice," the old man said, as he, too, rose to his feet to look for an exit. "Tell me if you find anything!"

I glanced over my shoulder. "Alright!"

The man whose wife had not replied stood up too, wordlessly, and mechanically began to help, as well. He had no cell phone to see by, anymore, and edged his way by touch alone.

A small tremor made the ground shudder, and I immediately looked up at the dark ceiling, instantly alert. There was a small, hollow trickling somewhere.

I decided that until big rocks started raining down on us, it would be best to keep looking.

"I found something!" the strained, hoarse shout of the beleaguered balding man sliced through the darkness. "There's an opening!"

"Really? That's great! Can you see anything?" I called, and immediately felt that was a stupid question.

"No, I think it's a hallway, though, maybe to the basement!"

"Ah! That's right!" the voice of the old man said. The blue light of his cell phone made him a small patch of glow in otherwise inky darkness. "There are underground levels, for keeping files and such. The subway is down there."

"There's a subway station underneath this building?" I asked.

"No, but the tunnels themselves were accessible."

"Well, _great_! We should try to get there!" I said. Our voices echoed hollowly back at each other. "Maybe we could follow the subway tunnels to get out!"

"What happens if people find us, and we're mucking around in subway tunnels that might not even have any _exits_ anymore?" the pessimistic woman, who had sat to my left, snapped.

"Then stay _here_ and wait!" I said angrily. "Nobody's saying you have to come with us!"

I couldn't see her face in the darkness, and that was probably a good thing.

"We should hurry," the old man called.

I nodded. "Kay..."

"I'm coming too!" the hysterical woman's voice cried out, sounding weak and wraithlike.

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I didn't want to make the first chapter ridiculously long, and it just kind of sets it up, I guess. The other option was to have a really long, drawn out chapter, and people don't tend to like that, I guess.

Please, for the love of God, review! #prostrates self in front of readers#


	2. Chapter 2

"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush," the old man snapped at me, as I pulled myself out of the tiny hole.

I grunted in pain, as I heaved myself above ground. Something piercing and painful shot through me, but it drifted across my mind almost as an afterthought. My energy completely spent, I could do no more than lie there against a fallen concrete slab and gasp for air.

Mr. Travis, the old man, was perhaps worse off than I if only because of his age, and he was dabbing at this forehead with a handkerchief that had once been white. He had abandoned his coat and tie several hours ago, and had rolled the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows. Somehow, he still managed to exude a cool air of calm, and determination shone in his pale yellow eyes.

We were not outside quite yet, and had surfaced at what had once been Poly Barton Subway Station, according to Lolita, the hysterical woman. It was completely deserted, and rubble littered the ground along with shattered glass from the ceiling. Since there was never much of a ceiling, except for glass, to cave in over the station, there was relatively little debris, however there was a cruel, bloody gash along the ridge of my shoulder from the glass I'd scraped against as I dragged myself free.

I touched it irritably, too tired to care. It didn't seem very deep, and at the moment it was low on the priority list.

The sky overhead was a deepening pink, and it was obviously sunset. Besides that, the enormous station clock had crashed to the ground quite near to us and told us so. Or perhaps it was simply frozen and it was a coincidence.

I sneezed loudly, shattering the silence and earning an indignant look from Mr. Travis.

Carl, the other man, had said next to nothing the whole way, and now sat hacking hair next to me, sweating profusely, grasping his heart. He didn't look as if his life had included much exercise before our seven hour exodus. It had taken five hours to get anywhere, and then to climb and dig our way out took two more. Carl looked about ready to burst, his face was bright red. He was scraped up worse than I was—if only because he was fatter and had more surface area to work with.

"Mind me asking what the hell that has to do with anything?" I asked blandly, and ran a hand through my muddy, tangled hair. It was tied back awkwardly with a rubber band, which I just _knew_ was going to hurt when I tried to remove. A frightening experience with a ruptured water pipe had resulted in my near panic, until I had been forcibly dragged away and back to safety, half drowned and screaming. Afterwards, to deal with my gross and sopping hair, Vera coughed up a rubber band.

"We should rest here," Mr. Travis said, ignoring my comment. He had assumed the role of leader, and it was just as well. He was the only one here with his head firmly planted on his shoulders.

No one protested, but Vera—the bitchy woman, gave a huge, gaping sigh. I didn't like her very much, as she had offered a snide comment every step of the way. Now, she was picking at her fingernails fastidiously.

In any case, we were finally out. I blinked owlishly, the fading sunlight hurt my eyes as much as the glass embedded in my shoulder.

"I don't hear anyone," Lolita said softly. "It's silent."

We realized she was absolutely right. It was deathly quiet, and it made me squirm with discomfort. Carl looked slightly queasy, and I grimaced. Neither Lolita or Vera looked particularly affected, and Mr. Travis was wandering off somewhere out of sight.

The only audible sound was the clock ticking the seconds, punctuating the silence with hollow thuds.

We sat there in an exhausted circle until Mr. Travis returned, and by then it was nighttime. The stars coated the the midnight black sky, giving a silvery, pale sheen to the earth.

"Emma," Mr. Travis said shortly, and motioned at me to follow him.

I eased myself to my feet slowly. I was a mess, every muscle in me was screaming in protest. I bit it down bitterly, because it wouldn't do any good and it would be preaching to the choir. Everyone else was in as much pain, and holding it in.

My left foot was particularly bad off, the shoes I wore had been digging into my little toe since the morning and I couldn't walk without a very noticeable limp any more. I didn't dare remove the shoes, though—the glittering, shattered glass littering the ground made me shudder at the thought. They sparkled in the starlight.

_It's a new moon_, I noted absently.

"What," I asked flatly, once we were out of earshot and I was beginning to wonder what this was all about.

"I didn't want to show them, yet," Mr. Travis replied, equally deadpan. He stopped, and motioned at a twisted, mutilated subway car, that appeared split in half—with the sight before me being the bottom half. "Look."

I glanced at Mr. Travis somewhat suspiciously, stepped forward and peered over the edge.

My heart leapt to my throat and I went rigid. The color drained from my face and I stared in speechless horror.

_Who would cause something like this?_

The scene was far too gruesome to describe; a massive field of twisted, maimed, bodies lay in what had been a park. The stars shone over them, illuminating them in pale relief, but it was unmistakable. They were human corpses—massacred, died where they'd fallen.

The smell of rotting, acrid flesh invaded my nose and I wondered how I hadn't noticed it before. I swallowed shakily, and looked away.

_Thank god it's nighttime...I don't think I could've handled it in the day..._

"Come on," Mr. Travis said tersely, and offered his hand for leverage.

I stared at him, up and down before finally settling on his thin, hawk-like face.

"There's more."

"M—_more_?" My voice shook tremulously.

I felt faint, and I swallowed heavily. What was left of my strength was draining quickly, but somehow I scraped up the nerve to nod and accept the leg up over the overturned subway car.

"Most of them are burned," Mr. Travis was saying. "None of them have been shot."

"It looks like the city's been bombed," I said softly, as I offered him a hand up.

I pulled, grateful that he wasn't all that heavy, and he swung up next to me.

"This isn't _bombing_," he countered. "_This_ is genocide."

The single word genocide, which I associated almost exclusively with the Holocaust, made me shiver, as I glanced out over the killing fields again and followed Mr. Travis along the length of the downed subway train.

"Are we just going to leave them alone?" I asked, obviously referring to the three remaining members of our group. I jumped quickly over a gaping hole in the side of a train, nearly tripping and falling face first into a rail bar.

"Do you have a better idea? Ms. Parker would faint if she saw the bodies," Mr. Travis said, in reference to Lolita.

I grunted noncommittally. "She's gonna have to see them sometime."

"It would be better to wait until they're not so tired," Mr. Travis replied crisply. "You're the youngest one here."

My nose wrinkled, and a short, pig-like snort emitted from my throat as I shook my head. I really disliked having my age held against me.

"So?"

"So I'm the oldest one here," he countered. "But the weakest."

"And so you're dragging me along because I'm supposedly more crash-resistant? I'm eighteen, on a _good_ day I can't run on my ankles, I have chronic back pain, my vision sucks—"

"Stop complaining," Mr. Travis interjected sharply, sounding irritated.

I fell silent, feeling very stupid.

We slipped down over the side of an overturned 18 wheeler, and found ourselves in a dark, thoroughly silent street. A white neon light flickered further off, in the shape of a dolphin.

"What're we doing?" I asked.

"There's a convenience store a little further down this way," Mr. Travis said. "It doesn't even look like anyone's even tried to come and help survivors, yet."

"But it's been eight or nine hours," I replied quietly, scanning the skies for telltale lights, that came from search and rescue personnel. "We're probably just not be in the part of the city that they're in."

I nodded, to reassure myself, and Mr. Travis looked at me dubiously.

"I _do_ hope you're right."

Mr. Travis led the way to the convenience store, and we walked in. Mr. Travis picked up something in the darkness, and I suddenly found myself blinking in the light of a blinding flashlight.

"There might be something in the back room," he said, and motioned behind me.

I nodded silently, and picked my way into the back room.

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Please review! I'd really love to hear... 


	3. Chapter 3

The back room of the convenience store was in shambles; anything that was breakable had shattered or spilled or fallen, and I had to pick carefully though the mess, in the dark. The shelves had fallen and practically nothing was left untouched.

"Is there anything back there?" Mr. Travis called from the front, his voice sounding loud next to the otherwise dead silence.

"Most of this stuff's fallen on the ground," I called back, "Where did you find the flashlight?" I jerked in surprise as the sensitive skin on the top of my left foot rubbed against something painful, and I felt something warm trickle down my foot. "_Shit_..."

I moved my foot away and eased it down carefully into a safe spot, though I winced at the feel of something squishy and wet laying against me, which stung slightly when it met the new wound. The muscles in my arms and legs ached, and I stood still for a minute to regain myself.

"Up front!"

"Were there any more?" I asked, and reached up to hold my pained, glass-torn shoulder. "I can't see back here!"

He didn't answer for a moment, and I stood still, letting my eyes adjust to the light. I could see the whip and pull of a flashlight in the darkness in the front room of the convenience store, and I merely waited, knowing he heard me. I heard noises of movement, of something tearing, and then Mr. Travis appeared at the door.

"Catch!" he said, and tossed me a flashlight of my own.

"Thanks."

He gave a grunt and turned away to do his own job, whatever it was he'd assigned himself.

I fumbled with the switch and shined the light around the back room. I spied a frozen, curled hand sticking out from behind a fallen wooden shelf, and I swallowed.

It was a flaw in me, I thought, that a dead body itself had really never scared because it was dead. Not even the corpse of my grandfather at his open casket funeral had done anything more than make me think how different he looked than in life—my grandfather, who died just when he was getting interesting. He was cold, and rather stiff when I reached into the coffin. But not particularly scary, no. I understood the fact that he was gone, beyond my reach, but it hadn't made me afraid.

_No,_ I thought to myself, _I'm more worried about _what_ killed him, not the fact that he's dead._

I picked my way through the back room, glancing around. I stepped over the body, refusing to glance at it after seeing that it resembled the girl in The Exorcist, with the wide, psychotic eyes, the discolored skin, and grotesquely grinning mouth—I knew it wasn't a grin, it was an awful grimace of pain, but I couldn't help it.

Steeling my nerves, I threw an angry glance at the shadowed, twisted body in an effort to squelch my irrational fear of the unknown. Death didn't frighten me, murder did. I took a deep breath, and then swung the light in front of me. I felt my heart thudding anxiously in my chest, making me tremble just the slightest.

"_Hey_! There's bottled water and canned food back here!"

There were at least ten cases of bottled water, of a brand called Tain—one I hadn't heard of, but that was a mundane observation. Next to it were a bunch of cans of vegetables strewn all over the floor. I toed at one with my bloody left foot and read the label. Creamed corn.

I glanced up, and looked at the walls. They were scorched, and...I turned around, and shined the light at the back wall—a wall which was no longer there, and instead a great hole was in its place, like a focused ballistics explosion.

I was no expert, by any means, at looking at things like that, but it all seemed to have been pushed outwards, like someone had stood where I was standing now and whatever explosion it was had gone outwards from me, through the wall and through the other buildings, making a dark tunnel.

Creeping towards it curiously, sidestepping the man's dead body, I stood in what had once been the wall, and stared out. It penetrated quite a while, and the light of the flashlight couldn't see to the end.

"This is weird," I murmured, touching the destroyed, _blackened_ brick with my index and middle finger. It fell away like powdered chalk as I touched it, and it stuck to my fingers like dull, jet black soot. I tried to rub it away with my thumb, only to find that it stuck to me relentlessly and quickly got all over my hand. Irritated, I smudged it on my pants to get rid of it, only to find that it left a big black smear on my thigh. I scowled at it.

"What killed you?" I asked almost dreamily, staring down at the body, at its twisted, possessed features.

"What killed him? The same thing as was at South City."

I looked up sharply, my ears catching on those two words, South City, and a question bubbled up quickly in my mouth only to be cut short when Mr. Travis continued.

"We'll take a box of bottled water back and some food. We're all starving and need to eat something. Is something wrong?" he peered at me questioningly, shining the light in my face. I stared at him with a mix of confusion and hesitation.

After a moment I snapped out of my stupor.

"What? Oh—okay!" I said, and struggled to reach the piled cans and bottles.

_South City? That's from—_

"Can you carry the food with one arm?" Mr. Travis asked, and handed me an empty cardboard box without a top. His eyes strayed to the bloody stain at my shoulder.

I nodded. "I should be able to. My arm isn't really affected if I don't hold something too heavy." To tell the truth I was amazed at myself for holding on this long. I felt more tired than I could ever remember feeling in my life, and the combined strengths of the injuries I'd weathered was crippling. But I wasn't special in this, as all five of us were bad off. I suppose it was that knowledge that kept me going: That if they could do it, I could too.

We packed cans of food and microwaveable cup-things of instant chili into the box, along with trail mix bags and two full boxes of cigarettes and some lighters for Carl and Mr. Travis.

I hefted it under my arm, balanced it against the jut of my hip, and felt it begin to slip almost immediately; I'd need to readjust it a lot to get it back to the Station. Mr. Travis himself shouldered a heavy box of water, and we left the convenience store, heading back towards where we came from in silence.

As we were walking along the side of the overturned train, Mr. Travis said, in a grave voice: "I haven't seen any rescue vehicles or helicopters." The world around us was mostly silent except for the hollow, metallic dinging of our steps on the hull of the train. There was no light except for distant, halfhearted remains of billboards, and our flashlights, which guided our paths.

"I don't know...I thought for sure they'd be here by now," I said, biting back a cry of pain as I landed weirdly on my weak ankle. "What could have happened?"

_This is all too weird. South City? No rescue people yet? In mainland America? What the hell's happened?_

I couldn't help myself but glance out over the field of dead bodies, reminding me of pictures I'd seen of WWI no man's land, or maybe even Civil War dead. The memory Mr. Travis' mention of genocide brought to mind images of the concentration camp dead. The air smelled strangely, embittered by the night breeze.

I swallowed hard, and returned my focus to stepping carefully and not slipping. My grip on the box was tenuous, at best, and I had to shift it again, hiking it further up on my side and wiggling my fingers into a securer grip. My teeth grit together and my mouth hardened into a line. I felt my injured arm start to pulse with blood, a sign it was getting tired, and soon it would start to ache terribly.

The rest of me was crying out for rest, and for a moment I wavered on my feet, uttering a slight cry as my left shoe dug viciously into my little toe. I paused for a moment to regain my balance and shook my head resolutely, telling myself that I couldn't sit down and quit now.

Mr. Travis, too, was showing signs of weariness, and I watched him stagger just the slightest ahead of me.

With my little finger I hooked my hair and pulled it out of my face, smoothing it behind my ear, and realized that we had made it back to the Station.

The three who had remained at the Station had made a little fire, and, seeing the beams of our flashlights, Lolita and Carl quickly came to take the boxes out of our hands and to the side of the camp fire.

"Did you get any blankets?" Vera snapped demandingly, peering at me, who sat down slowly, inching myself into a seat, with critical, beady eyes. "It's cold out here!"

I looked up at her with an icy glare. "Be grateful that you're even getting food!" I snapped, roused to anger by her ungratefulness.

Mr. Travis was short in forcibly shoving Vera from the box of food, and when she gave a huff, he scoffed at her, and then passed out food. I took a bag of trail mix, a bottle of water, and a can of beans, which we pried open using a knife, which took some doing. Only our ravenous appetites gave us the strength to saw into the steel cans with that pitiful blade, and as we ate, we slowly got sleepier. Carl and Mr. Travis set to puffing on their cigarettes.

"We saw what was on the other side of the train," Carl said darkly, as I was leaning back and succumbing to sleep. This roused me and my eyes slid open, and focused on Carl's corpulent, ashen face. He was staring at the fire.

I was filled with sympathy for the man. The memory of his horrific screaming, begging his wife to answering hit me in the face like I'd been slapped, but I made no motion to betray this. I frowned just a bit.

Even Vera went silent, and turned a little pale. Lolita made a spastic motion with her trail mix, and some spilled on the ground. Her face was white, and she was trembling.

"It's the same thing that happened at South City, isn't it!" Vera suddenly cried, her shrill voice piercing all our ears. It echoed back at us in the silence.

"At South City, or at the island nine miles southwest of South City?" It poured out of my mouth before I could stop it. It was such a tedious detail, many fans tended to ignore it. Subconsciously, I prayed that they would say no island was involved.

The group turned to stare at me strangely at my outburst, and even Mr. Travis paused.

"Yes, at Domino Island, but generally the island is considered part of South City," he said slowly.

I felt sheepish at my outburst and ducked my head, as color rose to my cheeks. "Sorry."

"Why is this happening?" Lolita asked, from where she sat, her eyes empty and sunk in with weariness.

_The androids hate humans,_ was the simple thought that sprung to my to mind, so familiar, though I was chewing a mouthful of trail mix and thankfully had no chance to mistakenly spit it out. But as soon as the thought issued in my mind I shoved it away in a near panic; that option meant things I didn't even want to think about, things that scared me.

For the first time a real sense of cold dread started to take hold, set off by the chill of the night creeping into my bones.

"You look sick," Lolita said softly, leaning forward and peering at me with a concerned look.

"I'm just tired," I said shortly, and rolled over onto my side, curling into a fetal position and slipping my hands between my thighs to keep them warm. My injured shoulder stung like someone had poured alcohol on it and even my hair ached inimically.

_Where am I?_

It occurred to me that there was no train near my home, much less a train that so closely resembled Japan's Shinkansen. I shut my eyes tightly, trying to drive the thoughts from my head. The buildings weren't like the ones back home, either. It was an observation that had slipped unbidden into my thoughts.

I shut my eyes tightly, and felt the cool concrete floor of the station seep into me as my cheek lay against the ground. I knew what lucid dreams felt like—I had them often enough, and this wasn't a lucid dream.

Though I badly wanted to think on that, I couldn't, since I was so tired.

_If I wake up here tomorrow, I'll have more than enough time._

With that thought, I let the grip on my consciousness slide, and I fell dead asleep.

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Thank you all so much for your reviews! I really appreciate them! And for all y'all who haven't reviewed yet...please? I'd like to hear how you think the story is coming along. 


	4. Chapter 4

When I woke up again, it was to the sounds of shouting and the piercing peels of sirens. Light flooded my eyes even from behind my closed lids, and I flinched, instinctually shying from it, but found that I couldn't move anything; my eyes shot open and I instantly let out a gurgling, bitten off cry: my contacts moved on my dry corneas, and my eyes stung cruelly as the soft plastic galled the sensitive tissue. The sudden white light blinded me, the noise deafened me.

I shut my eyes again tightly, but that didn't help: in that short second dust had come into my eyes, leaving them burning and miserably painful. At this point I realized that my body was aching with a crippling pain that invaded even my joints, leaving them sore to the point of disorienting. I was terrified, and didn't know what was going on.

I tried to open my mouth to scream, but found that my jaw was securely strapped into place, and my teeth were clenched: it came out as a feral groan. My head was unmovable, and I vaguely became aware of straps at my wrists and ankles, and across my chest and legs: I was strapped to a gurney.

At the moment I didn't care or perhaps didn't realize it, and I began to struggle, bringing to life the effects of yesterday's trials, and pain blossomed like blood from a gunshot wound to the stomach. I moaned and whimpered, fighting the jaw strap, and thrashed as hard as I could. My fear was irrational, but it was all too real. It was confusing.

_Where am I! What's going on!_

I felt myself begin to move, and I felt somebody grab a hold of my arm and jab something awful into my shoulder.

"_Fuck you_!" I spat out, in between a cry of sudden pain and surprise, but the jaw strap reduced any words I thought I said to unintelligible mumblings. Almost immediately things began to slow down, and within minutes I was limp and dazed.

My eyes opened somewhat, and I managed to blink my contacts back into place. Though I was staring straight upwards, I knew what had happened, now: The rescue crews were here. I heard the rhythmic thud of a helicopter's rotors and the different sounds began to sort themselves out. I closed my eyes again.

And almost at the same time an indignant rage blossomed within me at having no control over what happened to my own body.

_I can walk! I'm fine! I made it the whole way and I don't need _this

It was most likely that they had tied me down like this to the gurney, especially my head, in order to keep me from breaking my neck.

"Hey, come on now, just go to sleep, it'll make it easier."

I would have said something scathing and cruel, but I only opened my eyes and stared up icily at the man pushing my gurney. My hold on consciousness was tenuous.

"_Hey_—this one needs another shot of morphine," the man said, when I only continued to glare at him. He waved to the right.

_I'll kill him!_ I bawled irrationally in my thoughts. My eyes strained as far to the right as I could make them go, and struggled hard to move my head. Eventually my contacts dislodged again and stung my eyes.

I blinked them back into place just as we were passing a pale yellow truck and a woman with a sinister needle ran up to the side of the gurney. My eyes glanced for a moment at the truck behind the woman—and I went rigid. My mind ceased to function.

_I have to be hallucinating! I had to have seen that wrong! It was the light!_

The symbol on the truck had been two concentric black C's on a background of white, and underneath it read: CAPSULE CORP. We were already too far away to look back, and I suddenly realized that another needle had entered my shoulder.

"Shit, you hit a vein—" said the man who was pushing my gurney as I suddenly felt something warm wash along the side of my arm.

From there, I fell into a dizzy unconsciousness and the world went black.

* * *

The next thing I remembered was of something kneading my shoulder, and of feeling claustrophobic. It was much quieter, and my skin felt cool.

"Don't _fucking_ touch me," I growled, without thinking: the words slid from my lips without me really know what poured forth.

Abruptly, the kneading stopped, and my eyes slid open. My vision was fuzzy, and I realized that someone had taken the care to remove my contacts. Someone stood to my left, and was peering down at me. I lifted my head and found it was stiff to move as well as dully painful.

"Why can't I feel my feet?" I muttered, and flexed my hand slightly. I felt bandages around my fingers and up along the length of my limbs. I felt something conspicuously like a needle in the crook of my right arm and I flinched when I saw the tube and the baggie suspended above my head. I hated needles and the feel of one in my arm made my skin crawl.

"That's the pain medication," the nurse said, and I identified it as a man. "How are you feeling otherwise?"

"Like I got run over by a semi."

_Where are the other guys?_

I was too weak to sit up, and so I was relegated to lying there helplessly, staring at the fluttering blue and white striped roof of a tent, trying hard not to think too much but failing utterly.

I could hear ambient noise, somewhere, but that was so far away it was reduced to a dull murmur.

After a few minutes where I struggled with myself to come to terms with this new development and this cruel sense of disorientation, I set my mind to taking stock of my position to stave off the ensnaring fear that was threatening to take hold.

I lay on a low cot, with my head propped under a stiff pillow that allowed for little movement. There was no sheet covering me, and I could see that I was mostly left intact, except for that I could see my foot was bound with white bandages and the other had gauze attached to it in various places.

My arms were wrapped and appeared almost mummy-like, and as my face twisted with the effort of lifting my head I felt that there were bandages on my face and around my skull, too. A few of my fingers were taped to boards to keep them straight. Underneath the film of my shirt, I could feel bandages encircling and on my torso, as well.

_Funny_, I thought rather dumbly, frowning, _I didn't think I was _this_ bad off._

I let my head fall back and I gasped for air, as a dull stab of pain attacked me. My legs and arms began to tingle like they were asleep, and I started to feel nauseous.

They had not changed my clothes, and, above all, I felt filthy. I had not had a shower since yesterday morning, and the events between then and now had left me torn to pieces. There were still smudges of dirt in between my bandages and minor scrapes were left untouched, and I could even see dried blood in places.

What I could see of my hair was dismal: Stringy, dirt-caked and matted. I imagined my general appearance matched that—I certainly didn't come off smelling like a rose, the way movies would have you believe.

After a few minutes I had exhausted that and reluctantly turned to the question of where I was.

The image of Capsule Corp.'s logo lingered eerily in my mind and I shivered at the thought of it. I didn't want to believe it, I _didn't_ believe it. It was impossible. There was _no_ _way_ this could be real—things like this didn't happen for no good reason and there _was_ no good reason that I knew of.

_It's a hoax, it's got to be. But...who would pull off a hoax like this? These injuries aren't fake!_

I shivered, and felt goosebumps rise along my skin. I knew what I saw around me wasn't a dream—I'd always had radically lucid dreams before but this was nothing like them.

Still, despite the fact that I _knew_ I had seen the logo clearly, if only for a moment, I didn't want to admit it. I stubbornly insisted to myself that I had only thought I'd seen it and that the logo was, in fact, merely a coincidence that must have looked similar enough to the CC logo for me, in my half-conscious state, to have mistook.

I lay there troubled, and agitated. The needle was itching but I couldn't bring myself to so much as look at it.

It was impossible to say just how long I lay there, because I couldn't move enough to find my watch and no one bothered to answer when I asked.

By the time the sun was setting, the painkillers had mostly worn off, and with them went my lethargy. I supposed that the medicine also dulled my ability to move along with my nerves.

"Get the damned thing _out_," I groused, and swallowed back an urge to throw up as I felt the needle slide from my skin. The nurse performing the procedure only glanced at me perfunctorily.

A drop of blood trickled down my elbow and fell to the ground; I reeled with a wave of nausea and jerked my arm out of the nurse's grasp.

"I've got to put a band-aid on it," the woman said flatly, holding up a cotton ball doused in rubbing alcohol with pincers and a child's colorful band-aid in the other hand. I grudgingly let her apply it.

I sat there for a moment, my legs over the side of the cot and my upper body curled up. When it had started to get dark they had set up lighting and now the small field hospital was lit with a soft yellow glow. In the distance were rescue workers digging at the rubble of the city. It was shocking; there were a multitude of beds but a small amount of people.

Restless, I staggered to my feet and headed slowly for the edge of the tent, still limping, where the light stopped and the lonely, starlit wilderness of the ruined buildings began. When I made it there, I eased myself down and sat against a pole, staring out at the night.

These people were not Red Cross, they weren't the National Guard, they weren't anything I'd ever seen before. I sighed. There had been television stations prowling the field hospital: They weren't CNN, Fox, or any station I recognized.

An empty loneliness and fear consumed me and I was suddenly aware of the massive expanse around me, separating me from the tangible world and leaving me hanging somewhere in limbo.

It was well past the point for any Candid Camera-type recant, or one of those rigged Sci-Fi shows. Something like this wasn't a joke, and even if it _was_, it was a cruel and a costly one. No one would waste that kind of effort on someone as menial as me.

* * *

So we take a break from group-action for a chapter. Sorry if this was boring, it'll pick up in a bit! _Please_ review! 


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